Overheard in the house of Whine

Quotes from the last week that I really wanted to share, but none of them were worth an entire blog post.

"I'm looking for my teeth. I can't find my teeth! HAS ANYBODY SEEN MY TEETH?""

"I'm a big guy. I can handle the end slice."

"The hair not wants to be touching my ears" (somebody wanted a haircut)

"I think the office staff must be sniffing the nitrous oxide."

"Now my bed is also a trampoline!"

"Even if I'm saying someone else's name, if I'm looking at you, I'm talking to YOU!"

"I still can't find my teeth. WHO TOOK MY TEETH?"

"Never pass up the opportunity to pee."

"NO I DON'T NEED TO GO POTTY! I ALSO NEED A BROWNIE!"

"So that takes film instead of a memory stick?"

"But I also need to wipe my nose in your hair!"

Could someone please tell me?

What is it about the mere act of walking into the doctor's office that causes your previously (four four whole days!) feverish, coughing, runny nosed child to be miraculously symptom free?



Seriously, why couldn't his symptoms gone away BEFORE I made the co-pay?

Word Verification Wednesday

It's Wednesday again, and you know what that means!

It means that my SIL just called me and reminded me that today is Wednesday and to please remember to post the Word Verification game.

Not that I forgot it was Wednesday or anything, I'm pretty sure that I remembered that it's Wednesday, or maybe I didn't. I don't know.
I've had a bunch of work to do so I'm somewhat of sleep deprived and the days are kind of blending together. And Max has been sick and all he wants to do is sleep on my lap.

If you're new to WVW here's how to play.

1. Go to the comment box.

2. Look at the word verification code.

3. Come up with a definition for the word and type it in the comment box.

4. If the word there doesn't inspire you, refresh the page until you get one you like.

5. Play as many times as you want!

6. Come back often to read the comments. You guys are seriously funny.

7. Please, nothing rude, crude or unrefined. Please keep in mind that my kids read my blog.

8. Remember, this is not a competition, it is an exhibition. Please, no wagering.

9. Tell your friends! The more the merrier!

10. Extra points for using exclamation points!!!

11. If you don't want to define a word, feel free to use the comment box to write an essay comparing the air speed velocity of an African Swallow to that of a European Swallow. Be sure to include the number of times that the Swallow will need to beat it's wings per second to be able to maintain the air speed velocity. Extra credit if you explain the weight ratio of each Swallow to a coconut.

Here are a few of my faves from last week.

Regulsat: Describes the people who ALWAYS have to sit it the same regular spot at church.

hadsamb: A dyslexic, depressed baby sheep.

carcuse: It's a phrase that means...you are blaming your car for it.


Have fun guys!!
Remember, the more we can run up my comment count, the better;0)

A tale of a picky pea eating, dive bombing, kitchen trashing, rather naughty brown bird

This afternoon, I went and did some grocery shopping then picked up Brielle and Aaron from school.
When we got home, Max held open the door from the garage to the kitchen while the other kids helped me carry in the groceries.

I got a phone call just as the last of the groceries were being brought in. I answered the phone and a minute later, I realized that Max was still holding the door open and whining about something.

I asked Aaron to go close the door and bring Max inside. When Aaron went to do this, Max began sobbing, and pointing to the garage saying "The bird is in there! It also needs to come in the house!"
I told him that there was not a bird in the garage, and please close the door.
Max sobbed. There were tears in his great big eyes.
"The bird needs to come in the house!"
"Max, there is no bird in the garage."
"GET THE BIRD! GET THE BIRD!"

I asked Brielle and Aaron to go with Max into the garage and show him that there was not a bird in the garage.

The kids all went into the garage and when they came back in the house, there, on Brielle's finger was perched and imaginary bird.

Max was now happy.

"See" he said "The bird did also need to come in the house!"

Max very carefully took the "bird" from Brielle and sat it on the floor in front of the door.
"Hey Max" I said "I'm thinking it might not be such a good idea to put the bird on the floor. Someone might step on him."
Aaron ran over and scooped the bird off of the floor and held it in the air. Max fell apart.
"NO! NO! THE BIRD NEEDS TO BE ON THE FLOOR!! IT ALSO NEEDS TO BE ON THE FLOOR!!"

I told Aaron to give the bird back to Max.

Max took the bird and sat it back on the floor, then the stupid imaginary bird started flying around the kitchen, and Max started screaming "It's in the oven! The bird did fly in the oven!"
He ran over and opened the oven door, and then the bird flew a few laps around the kitchen, then he flew into the closet.
"The bird is also flying into the closet!"
Then Max ran over and opened the closet door.

Then the bird started dive bombing Brielle.

"Brielle! Brielle!" Max screamed in a panic "Bird is getting you! He's hitting your head!!"
Brielle screamed. (Wouldn't you scream too if you were being attacked by an imaginary bird?)
Max scared the bird away from Brielle's head then chased him around the kitchen. When he finally caught him he took "Bird" to his room.

Max came back a few minutes later and said "Bird was naughty, so he is also in time out."

Grateful for the moment of quiet, I asked Max "What kind of a bird is he anyway, what does he look like?"
Max answered "He's a brown bird."
"What size is he? Is he a big or little bird?" I ask.
"He does not eat his peas at dinner, so he is also smaller."

Just then Max starts screaming again. "BRIELLE! BRIELLE! BIRD IS ALSO HITTING YOUR HEAD! HE'S HITTING YOU!"
Brielle screams, and Max takes him back into time out.

Over the next ten minutes, Brielle was attacked by bird at least three more times.

I was beginning to be concerned because I really couldn't see how we could handle a pet bird who could fly through closed doors and enjoyed attacking my daughter.

So I just left the chaos and went to pick up CJ from school.

On the way home I told CJ about our new pet. I warned him to watch his step because Bird might be on the kitchen floor, and to watch his head because this crazy bird was into attacking people.
When we walked in the door, everything was quiet.

Too quiet.

Brielle was sitting at the computer doing her homework. (yes, you heard me correctly, she was doing homework on a Friday afternoon. Hey, I don't question it, I just happily allow it to happen) and Aaron, Max and the bird were nowhere to be found.

I went looking for Max and found him in his room playing quietly with his garbage truck.

"Hey Max, where's Bird?"

"Oh, he was very naughty, so I putted him in the garbage."

I'm pretty sure that's the shortest length of time anyone has owned a pet, either real or imaginary.

This was an imaginary bird. Please, don't anyone call P.E.T.A.

The reason why I feel like beating my head against a wall. Again and again and again and again.........

So, as it turns out, due to some strange things going on with his teeth, CJ needs to have some surgery done.

When we first met with the oral surgeon in December, he hadn't seen the x rays yet (I think the office may have lost them) and they couldn't find the letter sent to him by our dentist. He spoke in general terms about what would need to be done, and said he would request another x ray from our dentist and call me in a few days. He felt that we could schedule the surgery for spring break.
Several weeks later I still haven't heard from him, so I call the office to check on things. About an hour later, the doctor himself calls me. He has just looked at the x ray (? just looked at it?) and feels like this really can't wait until spring break, and we should have the surgery right away.
I speak with the office staff who gets us on the schedule as soon as possible which ends up being 4 weeks later.

That would be 28 days. (remember this number)

I assume everything is OK, and we make arrangements for the surgery to be Feb 20.
Last week, I get a call from the office telling me what the estimate for the surgery will be, what our insurance will cover and how much we sill have to pay. At the time I received the call, I was half asleep, dealing with a super nasty headache and the numbers didn't really sink in until DH came home and I told him about the call.
The numbers were all wrong, because we knew darn well that our insurance would cover more than what the office girl said.

DH called our insurance. They had no record of anything being submitted for an estimate or pre approval from their office.

I called the Oral surgeon's office the next day.
Me: "We spoke with our insurance because we're pretty sure that they will cover more than you quoted, but they couldn't tell us anything for sure because they've never received anything from your office."
Office girl: "Yes, we submitted that. We just fax it in, and they fax us back a copy of your benefits and we figure it out."
Me: "They have no record of that."
OG: "Well, I can submit it again"
Me: "Please do that."

The next day, we call the insurance. Still no record of anything being sent. We also learn that we need to get a pre authorization before the surgery.

I call the office again.
Me: "Our insurance still hasn't received anything from you, and we need to get pre authorized before the surgery."
OG: "Well, it says right here that it was sent."
Me: "Well, they still don't have any record of it."
OG: "I can send a pre estimate, do you want me to do that?"
Me: "YES!"
Because basically, that was what was supposed to have been sent in the first place. (and what I thought had been sent)

This week. Insurance still doesn't have any record of anything being sent.

I call the office. Again.
Me: "Our insurance still doesn't have anything from you. Did you send the pre estimate?"
OG: "Yes, but we haven't received anything back."
Me: "We also need to get pre authorization before the surgery. It's scheduled for this Friday. That's only three days away."
OG: "Hmmm........I guess what I can do is call the insurance company and give them the dental codes over the phone."
Me: (sarcastically in my head "could you really?")
Me: (out loud) "Yes, that would be great. Please do that."
OG: "I'll do that and call you back."

The next day, she calls me back.
OG: "I just spoke with your insurance, and got the pre authorization over the phone."
Me: "Great!"
OG: "And your insurance won't cover any of the anesthesia."
Me: "According to what I just read in our benefits, our insurance will cover 80% of anesthesia."
OG: (giggling) "Well, that's kind of tricky. They might cover it, and they might not. It just depends on whether or not they find it dentally necessary."
Me: "My son is 6 feet tall and nearly a black belt in karate. I'm pretty sure the doctor will want him asleep for this, because if he's awake, he might fight back."
(and just between us, I've met the doctor, and I'm pretty sure CJ could take him)
OG: "Well, they also said they won't cover the rest of the surgery until they see the x rays."

WHAT????

OK, the surgery is in two days, and she's just now finding out that they need to send x rays to the insurance?

Seriously?

This doctor is a preferred provider with our insurance. One would think that the office staff would know the insurance policies.

YA THINK???

So today we call the insurance and find out that they do indeed need to see the x rays before approving the surgery, and it may take up to 20 days after receiving the x ray to approve the surgery.

Which is tomorrow.

We call the office. They are sending the x rays today.

Now if you do the math, I scheduled this surgery 4 weeks ago, plenty of time to send x rays and allow for the 20 day approval time from the insurance.

I just called to cancel the surgery for tomorrow. OG was annoyed. Especially when I asked her WHY the x rays hadn't been sent earlier.
OG: "Well, sometimes they don't require it."

YOU ARE A PREFERRED PROVIDER THROUGH OUR INSURANCE COMPANY!!! YOU SHOULD HAVE KNOWLEDGE OF THE BENEFITS, AND YOU SHOULD KNOW WHEN THEY REQUIRE X RAYS!!!


So, I just rescheduled the surgery.


For March.


Spring break.

Word Verification Wednesday!

After a rather frustrating morning, I just realized that today is Wednesday!

Let's get those defining juices flowing and give me some definitions for the word verification code in the comments.

Please give me something funny. I could use a good laugh today :0)

A poem

Delgoog

Lady who did not whine.
Big Nate cheats stink bom,
to his room spank site.
Something really cool to show Jill.
Habblo hotel tag,
show Jill the game.
Max has pooped his undies,
potty train a teenager.
Suppolot.

She blinded me with science

Last week was Brielle's Science fair.
Thank you all so much for your project suggestions!
She almost decided to do her project on which cleans better, regular store bought cleaners, or home made "green" cleaners. (suggested by Jo)
However, Tiburon suggested that she do a project where she makes several batches of cookies and leaves on ingredient out of each batch to see what would happen.


Hmmmmmmm. Let's decide................

Cookies or cleaning.

Cleaning or cookies.

Cookies or cleaning..............


She decided on the cookies! (with no influence from me, I promise;0)






One evening, she made a batch of regular cookies, to use as an example of a perfect cookie.



The next afternoon, I heard my hand mixer being used, which was strange, because I have a perfectly good Kitchen aid which is great for making cookies.
When I went into the kitchen to see why she was using the hand mixer, I discovered that the bowl and beaters to the Kitchen Aid hadn't been washed, so she was forced to use the hand mixer, because there wasn't enough time to run the dirty bowl through the dishwasher.

???????

Brielle had a quick lesson on how to hand wash a bowl (and no, this was not the first time that she has been taught this skill) and we continued with the making of the cookies.

We made 1/4 batches of cookies and we worked out a system where I would mix the ingredients for the cookies, and Brielle would put them on the pan and in the oven and out of the oven and onto the cooling rack then onto the plate to be photographed.

This way, I was the keeper of the dough.

I love cookie dough.

I have to admit that I actually learned a few things with this project. I really thought that by leaving the butter out of the cookies that they would stick to the pan when they baked. Instead, they were just really gross.

Seriously, if you're going to leave something out of a batch of cookies, DO NOT LEAVE OUT THE BUTTER!!!

The butterless cookies looked awful, almost like they were growing hair on them or something, and they tasted terrible! The dough even tasted bad.

I thought that by leaving out the baking soda that the cookies would be flat, but strangely enough, they turned out to be one of the less bad batches of cookies.

Oh, and did you ever wonder what would happen if you leave the flour out of cookies?





The kids said it looked kind of like fruit leather with chocolate chips. Strangely enough, this was one of the better tasting batches. We referred to it as "cookie leather."





The overall winner for tasting the best were the cookies made with Splenda. Max wouldn't even try any of the others.

I can truly say that when this was over, I was SICK of cookies!

And I never thought I would say that. Ever.

Brielle made a big poster with photos of each plate of cookies along with her prediction of what would happen if a particular ingredient was left out, what actually happened, and then she taped a sandwich bag with the actual cookie in it next to the photo.

The morning of the science fair, when Brielle picked up her poster to take it to school, most of the photos fell off.

YIKES!

The double sided tape she was using was actually removable double sided tape.
We scrambled to find some real tape, and she taped everything back on, and we managed to get her to school only moderately late.

The teacher was very impressed with "The great cookie experiment" as she chose to call it.


For three days, we had plates of leftover cookies sitting in our kitchen. They sat there and nobody ate them.

NOBODY!

And we have three boys living in our house, one of them being a teenager who is chronically hungry.

So, I threw the cookies away.

Did you hear that?

I THREW AWAY COOKIES!!

But they weren't fit for human consumption. And I'm pretty sure that if we had a dog, it wouldn't have eaten them either.

The conclusion to this experiment?

Don't leave anything out of your cookies, or you'll be sorry.

or

Be sure to do a two part experiment. What happens when you leave ingredients out of cookies AND What kind of cleaning products work the best to clean up cookie dough which has been ground into the grout between the tiles on your kitchen floor.

Word Verification Wednesday!!!

Yesterday, I had made a loaf of bread in our new bread machine.

MMMMMMM

It smelled SO good!

I was trying to get the loaf out of the pan, shaking it upside down, trying to get the bread to slide out. I must have looked like I couldn't handle the situation, because Max comes over and says......

"I think I know what the plobwem is."

"OK Max, what's the problem?"

He replies "It's stuck."

(thank you Captain Obvious)

*****************************************************************

Today is Wednesday, and time for everyone's favorite game!

Word Verification Wednesday!

Go to the comment box, look at the word verification code, make up a definition and leave it in the comments.

It's fun!
It's easy!

Come back often to see the definitions left by others.
Play as many times as you wish!

Don't like the word you got? Refresh the page and try again!

Previous Word Verification Wednesday posts can be found here.

Have fun!!!!

Have you ever wondered?

Have you ever wondered what would happen if you used liquid dish soap in the dishwasher?






Or worse, have you ever wondered what would happen if one of your kids wondered what would happen if they used liquid dish soap in the dishwasher?



















I now know.

I can't even begin to describe the mess that was on the kitchen floor.

Give us this day.........

The UPS man came to our house last week.

He brought us a special package that brought JOY to my heart!

We gathered the family around and opened the box.




What could it be?




Can you guess?

Is the anticipation just too much?




Do you have any idea what it is?






It's one of these!





A BRAND NEW BREAD MAKING MACHINE!!!!!!

TA DA!!!!!

(please notice the Vanna White-ish "Here's the fabulous prize" hands being used by Max and CJ)

(Yes, I forced them to do this.)


(And No, Max is not still in his pajamas at 10:00 in the morning. It was like 9:30, 9:45 at the latest)

We took this magnificent, MAGICAL machine out of the box, and stared in awe at it's greatness.

(Isn't it lovely? Does it just make your heart leap with joy ?)

At this point, I held up one of the styrofoam blocks which had been used in the packaging of our lovely bread making wonder. I looked at Aaron who had been eyeing the styrofoam packaging and gave him a look.

"THE" look.


You know the one, the "tight lipped stern frown, head slightly tilted, one eyebrow raised" glare.


The look of excitement left Aaron's face. "OK Mom" he sighed "I won't turn the styrofoam into snow."

And I was so glad that we got this settled before he broke the styrofoam block into a bazillion little pieces and distributed them all over the house.

He loves to do that.

Anyway, back to the making of the bread!

I started to read the instruction manual, but finally decided on watching the handy video instead.
We sat down as a family, and watched the riveting demonstration on bread making. And just for the record, we did not make fun of the lady in the video.






Really, we didn't.







Then, it was time for us to make our own bread!


First, we put in the water and the flour.




Then the sugar, dry milk, butter and yeast.


( the whole time we were doing this, we did not imitate or make fun of the lady on the instructional video)




(Really, we didn't)



(Notice Max's "Vanna hands")





Then we put the pan in the bread machine.




Turned it on, and waited for the magic to begin.



The little window at the top was a point of fascination for the kids. They stood there shining a flashlight inside to watch the bread being made.



For like two hours.





The heavenly aroma of baking bread filled our home. We could hardly wait for the bread to be finished!


Finally, our dear breadmaker beeped, indicating the bread was finished!!!







We gathered round, and slowly I lifted the lid to reveal...............









One great big loaf of really ugly bread.

(Not that I've ever made butt ugly bread before)







YIKES!!



I went ahead and sliced up the strange looking loaf, and what do you know?

It was delicious!!

And completely devoured within a few minutes.

Now, I do need to add that the first loaf was the only one to look like that (except for the one time when I kind of forgot to put the mixer paddles in, and didn't realize this until about an hour into the process and at that point had to dump everything out, put the paddles in and then dump it back in and start over) The rest of the loaves have turned out quite nicely.

Since then I've made quite a bit of bread. I don't have pictures of the other perfect looking loaves, because they seem to disappear before I can get my camera.


Over all, I will give the Zojirushi home bakery a 5 star rating!!

We love it!
Especially the timer feature, which allows us to wake up to a fresh warm loaf of homemade bread in the morning.

Word Verification Wednesday!

Go to the comment box. Read the word verification code and give it a definition.

Please, nothing rude, crude or unrefined. (my kids read my blog)

Play as many times as you wish!

Don't like the word you got? Refresh the page until you get one that you like.

For previous posts and examples, go here.

Keep your arms and legs inside the ride at all times, and HAVE FUN!

Vampire? .............Or not?

A while ago, CJ was complaining that some kids at school were calling him "Vampire."

At first I thought it was kind of funny, but lately, I'm beginning to wonder if they might be right.


Reasons my teenage son might be a vampire.

#1. He likes to be awake all night, and will sleep all day. (if we let him)


#2. He has a widows peak.


#3. He doesn't like garlic bread.


#4. Look at these teeth! Only recently have I noticed how pointy they are.






#5. He can make his eyeballs shake. (OK, I realize that isn't a typical characteristic of a vampire, but it is pretty creepy when he does it)

#6. He really likes corned beef hash.


On the other hand, I just had him go look in the mirror, and he did see his reflection (or at least he said he did)

What do you think? Vampire? Or not?

I would just like to add that I have NOT read the Twilight series, nor have I seen the movie. Not that it has anything to do with this post, I just want you to be aware of this before leaving a comment comparing my son to Edward Cullen. I won't understand what you're talking about.